Dennis Fusaro, a former Ron Paul staffer, released emails and phone conversations this week to news organizations that placed multiple individuals between a rock and a hard place.

Fusaro started the week by releasing emails that indicated that the Ron Paul campaign paid Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson thousands of dollars to leave Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign and join the Ron Paul campaign.

In 2011, Sorenson denied the accusations that he was offered any money, but in a recorded phone conversation, he told Fusaro that Ron Paul’s deputy national campaign manager, Dimitri Kesari, wrote a check out to this wife.

On Thursday, the Economic Policy Journal released another phone conversation that Fusaro had with Mitch McConnell’s campaign manager, Jesse Benton.

Benton used to be the national campaign chairman for Paul, he is married to Paul’s granddaughter, and there was speculation that Benton might run Rand Paul’s potential 2016 presidential campaign.

Fusaro called Benton in early January to ask if he knew that Kesari offered Sorenson a $30,000 check from a non-campaign account.

Benton denied any involvement and said, “I’d like to see that if you got proof. I don’t know anything about that.”

If the allegations were true, Benton stated that he would like to take action and figure out what happened.

Mitch McConnell’s campaign manager then went on to tell Fusaro, “Between you and me, I’m sorta just holding my nose for two years, cause what we’re doing here is gonna be a big benefit to Rand in ’16.”

After the news broke, Mitch McConnell’s campaign released a statement from Benton:

“It is truly sick that someone would record a private phone conversation I had out of kindness and use it to try to hurt me. I believe in Senator McConnell and am 100 percent committed to his re-election. Being selected to lead his campaign is one of the great honors of my life and I look forward to victory in November of 2014.”

Fusaro told The Hill that the truth needed to come out about the alleged check to Sorenson. “This was illegal, and it’s harmful to the political process,” said Fusaro.

He also claimed that “self-defense is a legitimate right” and that Benton’s comments are “exactly what I would expect from a professional PR guy to try to divert the issue away from his own personal failings.”

Mitch McConnell’s campaign quickly tried to do some PR work on Thursday to make light of the situation: